48 Hours – Vive la commune!

There could barely be a better moment to block the ECB. All will come. We are “the nicest people Europe has to offer” (NoTroika), we are “the International of the mob” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), and we are “the ultras of Varoufakis” (Gramsci).

We don’t have a crystal ball and we cannot foresee what exactly will have happened on the evening of March 18. But according to what we know and hope for, Blockupy can become much more than another blockade or another rebellious ritual. Signals from all political and geographic directions of the movement are indicating that there is an uncontrollable desire for a world beyond capitalist nonsense, a will to a lived solidarity and a many-voiced wish for real democracy. If that all comes together, Blockupy will set a practical tone for a politics of the street that links a clear and unambiguous stance with an announcement that many and increasingly more people understand. This is for us the political core of Blockupy – to let shimmer today what a coming radical social left can be. Even gods can die when people no longer believe.

There is not much more to be said. Everyone knows what it’s about. Even the police knows what it wants. It is blowing its propaganda wind in our faces and preparing Frankfurt for a state of exception. After the total ban in the first year and the police kettles in 2013 we are now getting the third round 100 kilometres of barbed wire, almost all water cannons of the country, armoured tanks – and a “communication team” that tweets about it. In this manner the state already prepares what we call a metropolitan strike. Busses, trains, streets and neighbourhoods surrounding the ECB: everything is at a standstill and will be blocked off. The ECB is closing its offices and restricting its inaugural celebration to a very party. The ceremony of embarrassment is less interesting than any graduation ball in the country: does anyone even want to know what the mayor of Frankfurt and the Green party vice of Hessen will say on Wednesday? If one only looks to the embarrassment of the political staff, the 18th of March is already the day of Blockupy: no competition.

Yet behind Frankfurt’s CDU-Green Party embarrassment the actual enemy is showing contour: the diktat of capital profits, its political regime and the police so willing to be at its service for anything, anytime. Whoever looks at the markets and doesn’t submit to the figures in the black cannot bear it. Whoever demands a real alternative cannot bear it. Greek voters, Spanish insurgents, Blockupy at the ECB tower: they all get to deal with the structural violence of the central bankers and the bare violence of the police henchmen.

Demonstrations with no consequences belong to normal business. What counts is a disruption. That’s why Wednesday and not on a weekend. That’s why the ECB towers and not a dance in the open meadow. Against the malicious spectacle of capitalism, we pose the actual movement of ideas. The multiplicity of the many is more militant than a black block and more peaceful than a sitting blockade. We act together and we will not fear. Vive la Commune!

What is Blockupy?

Blockupy is part of a European wide network of various social movement activists, altermondialists, migrants, jobless, precarious and industry workers, party members and unionists and many more from many different European countries from Italy, Spain, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Germany and other countries. Together we want to connect our struggles and powers beyond nation-state lines. Together we want to create a common European movement, united in diversity, which can break the rule of austerity and will start to build democracy and solidarity from below. Blockupy and the actions in Frankfurt are only one step along this way.
As a transnational movement we oppose explicitly each and every attempt for racist, nationalist or antisemitic divisions as well as conspiracy theories to interpret the world.
The German Blockupy alliance is supported by activists from various emancipatory groups and organizations; among others, the interventionist Left, Attac, Occupy Frankfurt, trade unions, youth and student organizations, the forum of the unemployed in Germay (Erwerbslosenforum), the party DIE LINKE, the network peace cooperative (Netzwerk Friedenskooperative) and the alliance umsGanze...